Ensuring that all children, youth, and adults with disabilities, and those receiving educational supports, are valued by and contribute to their communities of choice. |
|
|
|
Now I’ve Got Your Heart: Celebrating the Education of Direct Support Professionals
The Institute’s Research and Training Center on Community Living is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its College of Direct Support, a critical partner for service providers as they navigate high staff turnover rates that have worsened in the global pandemic.
Launched in 2002 when on-demand learning was in its infancy, the College of Direct Support has produced critical tools for recruitment, training, and retention of direct support professionals, several disability advocates within and outside of ICI said in a recent video celebrating the anniversary.
“We didn’t develop a course and then match it to a skill standard,” said ICI Director Amy Hewitt, who along with several current and former ICI staff members helped create CDS. “We started with the skill standards and built the curriculum around the core competencies of workforce development and practice improvement.”
In the last fiscal year alone, learners completed more than 650,000 DirectCourse lessons. DirectCourse is a learning management platform of Elsevier, which began collaborating with CDS in 2011.
“If you tell me the regulations, then you’ve got my hands and I’ll do what you tell me to do. If you tell me what the purpose is, then you’ve got my head, and I can think of ways to tweak it so now I’m getting something better out of it. And then, if you really understand the why, now I’ve got your heart, and that’s where the real action is,” said Sue Swenson, a longtime federal disability policy leader.
Read more about the College of Direct Support. |
|
Where They Are Now: ICI Reconnects with ADA Fellows
Navigating war, pandemic, persistent ableism, or a combination of all three, participants in the ADA Anniversary Fellowship Program in Inclusive Education (pictured at the University of Minnesota in 2017) continue to work for global inclusion, five years after their University of Minnesota experience.
In 2017, the Institute on Community Integration and the Humphrey School of Public Affairs collaborated with Arizona State University to welcome 28 fellows to the six-week intensive fellowship. The fellows, 20 of whom completed their experiences in Minnesota, observed and formed connections with local organizations working for more inclusive classrooms. The program was led by ICI’s Renáta Tichá and Brian Abery,
co-directors of the Global Resource Center for Inclusive Education.
“When the war started, they asked us to reduce teacher salaries as much as possible to save money for the war,” said Valentyna Malanchiy, a fellow from Ukraine. And we are trying to preserve computers and other learning materials because we know we won’t be able to replace them.”
Read more about what a few former fellows are doing today. |
|
Even in Death, Disparities
A daughter is kept from attending her mother’s funeral. A patient who feels sick is never told he is dying.
A new book edited by a team that includes the Institute’s Roger J. Stancliffe explores the persistent inequities that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) experience at the end of their own or their loved ones’ lives.
End of Life and People with Intellectual and Developmental Disability: Contemporary Issues, Challenges, Experiences and Practice (Palgrave Macmillan) presents scholarly research and its translation into practice, with real-world personal stories, resources, and practical discussions of do-not-resuscitate orders, suicide, accessible funerals, death doulas and other topics. More than three dozen authors from 10 countries in Europe, Australia, and North America contributed to the work.
Stancliffe, now an ICI senior research associate, is professor emeritus at the University of Sydney. He has been studying and writing about end-of-life issues for people with IDD for more than a decade. Michele Wiese, Western Sydney University; Philip McCallion, Temple University; and Mary McCarron, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, also served as editors.
“The taboo and the sensitivity of the topic has meant that this wasn’t even a research question until about 20 years ago, and those dynamics still play out today in real life,” said Stancliffe. “Families and support staff are fearful of upsetting the person and causing long-term psychological harm, so they do nothing or actively conspire to hide the truth, with the best of intentions. But there’s good reason to believe that is actually causing harm.”
Read more about end-of-life issues for people with IDD. |
|
Through the Moving Mountains Award, the Institute on Community Integration, the National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals (NADSP), and ANCOR recognize organizations using leading practices in direct support workforce development that result in improved outcomes for people with disabilities. We are pleased to announce that Core Services of Northeast Tennessee’s DSP Retention Initiative and The Arc Mid-Hudson’s DSP Success Coach Program have been awarded the Moving Mountains Award for 2022! The award presentation will be held at the Reinventing Quality Conference, July 31–August 2 in Baltimore, MD.
https://lnkd.in/gbaCkmmg |
|
Community Supports in Crisis: No Staff, No Services
Authors: Institute of Community Integration, Human Services Research Institute, and National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services
The system of services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) has come a long way in the last 30 years — from segregated care in remote institutions to a robust and varied network of community supports. This progress took decades and was not inevitable. It was achieved through persistent advocacy on multiple levels. It took lifting the voices of people with disabilities and family members, litigation and legal action to secure rights, federal legislation that codified the values of inclusion and access, and building a body of research and evidence-based best practices. All the progress toward community living that has been made in services for people with IDD over decades is now in jeopardy — because of catastrophic labor shortages and pervasive high turnover rates in the workforce that supports them, direct support professionals (DSPs).
This white paper from ICI and its partners at HSRI and NASDDDS provides an overview of the depth of the crisis in the workforce and the impact on people with IDD and sounds the alarm about the nature and scope of the workforce crisis in the IDD service system. Published by ICI. |
|
Policy Forum: Are Large Institutions for People with Intellectual or Developmental Disabilities a Thing of the Past?
Discussants: Sheryl Larson, Mary Sowers, and Celia Feinstein
Facilitator: Julie Bershadsky
This Policy Forum, which was recorded on June 23, 2022, discusses the recent Policy Research Brief titled, Are Large Institutions for People with Intellectual or Developmental Disabilities a Thing of the Past?
Slides from the presentation are included. The Policy Forum is hosted by ICI’s Research and Training Center on Community Living. |
|
TIES Center Brief 10: Providing Access to School-Wide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports for Students with Significant Cognitive Disabilities
Authors: Patricia McDaid, M. Kathleen Strickland-Cohen, Virginia Walker, and Lyndsey Aiono Conradi
Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is an evidence-based approach used to promote inclusive environments and prevent and decrease challenging behavior for all students. However, many students with significant cognitive disabilities, especially those served in self-contained special education settings, do not always receive access to all three tiers of PBIS. This Brief
presents ways to design PBIS systems that are accessible to all students. It describes the importance of including all students in PBIS structures and gives practical strategies to help schools achieve this goal. It ends with the story of a student who benefited from full access to his school’s PBIS system. Part of the TIES Center Briefs series. |
|
Schleien Scholarship Accepting Applications
The Jason David Schleien Memorial Scholarship offers $3,000 to qualified students who actively promote the community inclusion of individuals with disabilities, disadvantaged youth, and other underserved populations. These activities could take place in the spring, summer or fall. Students must be enrolled full-time at the University of Minnesota’s College of Education and Human Development and report their experiences to the Schleien family after completing the project. Applicants should submit a one-page proposal to ICI’s
Nik Fernholz outlining their interest in the stated examples of areas of study and working with the relevant populations. Read more about this scholarship opportunity. |
|
Come to the 2022 Reinventing Quality Conference
The 2022 Reinventing Quality Conference will be held July 31 – August 2 at the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland. Held every two years, Reinventing Quality showcases best practices in person-centered supports from across the nation. ICI is among the conference hosts and several Institute staff are presenting at the event, including ICI Director Amy Hewitt, who will deliver a keynote address on the direct support workforce. Registration is open. |
|
DSP Survey Closes on July 22
Over the past 24 months, direct support workers have experienced high risks of infection, hardship, and exhaustion. Many have become ill and lost loved ones. The voices of DSPs and frontline supervisors matter, now more than ever. ICI, in partnership with the National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals (NADSP), developed this confidential survey to better understand the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on direct support workers and identify the most effective ways to protect DSPs, frontline supervisors, and the people they support.
Please forward this survey to direct support workers, including paid family members, and ask them to complete it by July 22, 2022. Their answers will be anonymous. National and state-specific results from the survey will be shared widely in September 2022. Three earlier surveys were conducted by ICI and NADSP and the results are available here.
The current survey is for both direct support workers who completed an earlier survey and those who did not. |
|
MNLEND: In June, MNLEND launched the Co-Lead (collaborative leadership) Initiative by awarding mini-grants to 10 community organizations. From July 2022 through April 2023, Jennifer Hall-Lande,
Macdonald Metzger, Sally Sexton, and Rebecca Dosch Brown,
alongside hired MNLEND alumni, will support the organizations to improve disability inclusion and/or early childhood development outreach in culturally-responsive ways. The team will use person- and family-centered thinking and human-centered design (HCD) approaches. Jess Roberts, who also trains LEND fellows in HCD, will guide staff, alumni, and community partners as they co-create projects. |
|
Macdonald Metzger: On June 10–14, Metzger
(pictured) presented a training, ”Supporting the Full Inclusion of People with Disabilities in Local Media,” in Kisangani, a city in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Participants included media owners, media managers, and reporters who cover disability news. More than 30 media personnel attended the three-day intensive workshop. Jean-Baptiste Quillien
facilitated a one-day forum on disability inclusion with more than 100 students—including students with disabilities—at the University of Kisangani. Congolese Radio and National Television and other media agencies in Kisangani will continue providing a platform for people with disabilities to tell their own stories on radio and television. |
|
AAIDD Conference. ICI’s Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on HCBS Outcome Measurement (RTC-OM) had three panel presentations at the 146th annual meeting of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD), which was held in person in Jacksonville, Florida on June 13–15 and virtually on June 27–29. Matthew Roberts, James Houseworth,
Renáta Tichá, and Brian Abery were the panelists on “The Development and Testing of HCBS Outcome Measures Designed for Proxy Respondents.” Abery, Tichá, Roberts, Houseworth, and
Alec Nyce were the panelists on “Results from a Pilot Study of Person-Centered Home and Community-Based Services Outcome Measures.” Tichá and Abery were also the panelists on “The Development of Person Centered Home and Community Based Outcome Measures in the U.S.”
Also at the AAIDD annual meeting, Houseworth, Sandy Pettingell, Roger Stancliffe, Julie Bershadsky, Tichá, and
Alicia Zhang presented a concurrent session, ”Day and employment participation among IDD services users: Factors contributing to paid and community-based activities.” Stancliffe, Pettingell, Houseworth, and Tichá presented a paper online, “Socially-inclusive community participation: Community groups and religious services.” Stancliffe, Pettingell, Bershadsky, Houseworth, and Tichá presented a poster, “Community participation and choosing to stay home if you want.”
Sarah Hall, Libby Hallas, and Jennifer Hall-Lande
presented two concurrent sessions: ”The sustainability of self-directed supports across the lifespan” and ”Self-directed supports: Benefits and challenges.” Lynda Lahti Anderson, Julie Kramme, and Stancliffe presented a poster, “Retirement: Experiences and perspectives of adults with IDD.” |
|
National Center on Educational Outcomes. On June 27–29, several National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) staff members presented at the Council of Chief State School Officers’ (CCSSO) annual National Conference on Student Assessment (NCSA) which was held in Atlanta. Sheryl Lazarus (NCEO Director, pictured) and
Andrew Hinkle presented, “Making Sure Interim Assessments Accurately Assess Students with Disabilities” and “Accommodating Students with Sensory Disabilities Across the Comprehensive Assessment System.” Lazarus also presented, “Unpacking and Updating Universal Design Guidelines on Assessment.” Yi-Chen Wu and
Kristin Liu presented, “What We Learned on Making and Implementing Accessibility and Accommodations Decisions for English Learners.” Martha Thurlow presented, “The Future of Fairness and Equity: Perspectives from K–12 Alternate ELP Assessments.”
Kathy Strunk presented, “Who is Participating in our State’s Alternate Assessment? Using District Justification and Assurance Processes.” Strunk and Thurlow presented, “Tools for IEP Teams: Making Appropriate Decisions for Alternate Assessment Student Participation.”
On June 29, NCEO and CCSSO’s Assessment, Standards, and Education of Students with Disabilities (ASES) collaborative jointly held a forum on issues surrounding the use of personal student assistive technology and online assessment participation. This in-person forum was held immediately following NCSA. There were presentations from representatives from Google, Apple, Pearson, TextHelp, the Washington Office of Public Instruction, and the Utah State Board of Education. The purpose of the forum was for participants to come together to better understand how the technologies and platforms interact, the challenges for students and educators, and how everyone can work together to make improvements and find solutions. Following speaker presentations, breakout groups discussed how to improve the use of assistive technology for different groups of students (e.g., students with sensory disabilities, students with significant cognitive disabilities, English Learners,
students with high incidence disabilities) so that students benefit from positive online assessment participation experiences. A report will be produced that summarizes the session and discussion. Strunk, Hinkle, Lazarus, Liu, Thurlow, Wu, and Darrell Peterson participated in this forum. |
|
Bill Gaventa
Bill Gaventa, who has spent a long career connecting the worlds of spirituality and disability, was preparing recently for a webinar for the National Center on Advancing Person-Centered Practices and Systems. The webinar, expected to be held this fall, will address spirituality in person-centered planning and practice.
In 2018, his book Disability and Spirituality: Recovering Wholeness was published by Baylor University Press.
“In the other areas of health and human services, there has been a great deal of research on the role of spirituality in patient outcomes and in well-being, but not so much in the field of IDD until somewhat recently,” said Gaventa, a former ICI collaborator and Impact issue editor. He credits scholars including Erik Carter of Vanderbilt University, another ICI collaborator, with creating that change. “It’s a pretty high priority for families and individuals with IDD, but it hasn’t been as important for faith communities and for service providers. Sometimes, support service providers fear they will be accused of proselytizing, but there is nothing that prevents them from asking people with disabilities what gives their life meaning and what support they need to facilitate that.”
Read more about Gaventa. |
|
|
|
This email was sent to ICI staff by Institute on Community Integration, 2025 East River Parkway, Minneapolis, MN, 55414, USA. The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity educator and employer.
mass email privacy statement | |
|
|
The University of Minnesota stands on Miní Sóta Makhóčhe, the rightful homelands of the Dakhóta Oyáte. ICI recognizes that the U.S. did not uphold its end of these land treaties. It is the current and continued displacement of the Dakhóta Oyáte
that allows the University to remain today. At ICI, we affirm our commitment to address systemic racism, ableism and all other inequalities and forms of oppression to ensure inclusive communities. |
|
|
|
|
|
|